Summer 2008

So I have this laziness about me that means I haven't posted in quite a while, but I'll try to catch you up on all the important stuff. First, in May when school got out I went home and started working on the farm. Ian graduated the sixth of June (Laurie's B-day) so there was a lot of anger about getting a driving permit. Laurie was able to take the test at the beginning of July and failed, and then took it at the end of the month and finally passed. I bought a pygmy goat for $50 some time in June. His name is Thomas. He's been growing like a weed and lived with the heifers for a while, but we moved most of them up the road so lately he's been living with the cows in the main barn. He even goes out to pasture with them. I was telling my grandma the other day, he doesn't think he's a cow, but he might think the cows are goats. At the end of June we had a pig roast for Ian's graduation party. I think it was even a little more successful than my own. In July we washed the pipeline. With all four of us working it only took 3 hours, but it needs done again, and I guess that probably won't happen until next summer. Also in July my parents took an 11 day vacation to Wyoming from the 14th to the 24th. Ian and I ran the farm, and I cleaned house. The house looked decent, (not finished, but livable) on the 24th, but that ended on the 25th. I can't wait until I don't have to think about the conditions any more. In August we started taking cement out of the heifer and cow barns so that they would be more functional, but we didn't finish either job before we left, so I'm guessing dad will finish the cow barn without us, but the heifer barn project may be left until we return home. Oh well, that's pretty much what I did this summer. I'll try not to be so long with my next post.

Experiment Update

So apparently Jon thought it would be a lot of work to bottle feed the rams for forty days so he came up with a new plan to get the PTU into the lambs. Instead of bottle feeding we will give the lambs a pill. This will help ensure that each gets the same amount. Also, it lessens my concern about how the lambs will do if they were not to receive colostrum.
On another front, I thought I would let you all know that I am going to fail my O Chem test on Wednesday because I have not been keeping up whatsoever and I can't catch up on that much information in a weekend. Oh well, maybe next time I'll learn.

The Experiment

So, as I said I might, I'm going to inform you of exactly what my research is going to entail. First off, I guess I'm going to be working with sheep. Particularly young males of the species. For the next month I will be learning how to do different procedures under a girl named Suzie as I wait for the lambing that will be occurring in March. Once the lambs are born I will start the actual research. For the first 40 days of life I will be bottle feeding eight lambs. Four of these will be the controls for the experiment and four will be getting a special formula that will inhibit the thyroid gland. This has been shown, in rodents, to affect the size and function of the testes, being twice as large and producing twice as much sperm. This experiment will verify if the same type of process could be used in livestock. Rams have a shorter amount of time before they mature than cattle, so this will provide results faster and may lead to using this technique in cattle. The lambs will also be weighed once a week and measurements of testes will be taken along with blood samples. The weight measurements will help to determine if the lambs' growth is stunted by the experiment. The blood samples and testes measurements will help to determine whether the experiment is working properly and the hormone levels are changing. This work will continue on through the summer, even though I won't be here, and then when I get back next fall the rams should be about to maturity and we will castrate them and look at what's going on inside the testes. I am really excited to start work on this project and I may be informing you what's going on along the way. I guess it depends on how busy I get.

Organization

So it's been a while since my last post. I guess I'm getting kind of slack from when I first started my blog. But then again, I think I was just trying to get it established so that if someone visited the site for the first time they would have something to read. It also may have influenced me that Philip had hundreds of posts and I was trying to catch up. At this point I have abandoned that goal. It really wasn't anything that great to start with. So on with it, why did I decide to write a post today?
I guess the most direct reason would be that I found myself in the position that I feel I must do something productive, but reading for ecology does not seem extremely interesting. This being said, I also feel as if I have something to share about my life, and as I browsed through my bookmarks I noted that I could update my blog which has been lacking in use. So what is it about my life that I choose to share with the world?
It's not very exciting for most anyone but me, but I've decided that I may be able to make my life a bit more organized. However, I'm going about it in a different way than most would attempt. Instead of removing some of the fluff from my life I am actually going to add more, though there is a possibility that this process may actually remove some of the less important aspects of my day.
This really started with the fact that as an honor's student I am required to write a thesis, which means I need to do some research. It is important to get into a lab during sophomore year in order to have time to do this research. For this reason I began looking into labs where I could do something interesting. It took emails to four professors, but I finally found one that would have a place for me. I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing yet, but I guess that I will be finding out on Tuesday, and maybe I'll write a post explaining it some other day. For now, it will suffice you to know that it deals with reproduction in bulls.
This being said, I feel that I will be very busy trying to prioritize my time. I decided to drop my o chem lab until next semester so that I would not feel entirely overwhelmed. On top of this I plan to participate in two campus ministries, CSF and Cru, and join a bible study. This will also help to fill some of my time. I am also taking a ballroom dance class this semester and have found dancing so much fun that I want to learn more dances than we will in class. Thus, on Friday and Saturday nights I will be going to Argentine Tango and Swing lessons. With all these things on my plate I am hoping to be driven enough to work on my homework as it is given and be very productive. I'm not sure how this will all turn out, but I guess it's worth a try. Wish me luck.